Taskforce on Women in R

Di Cook

and Heather Turner, Jenny Bryan, Julie Josse, Oliver Keyes, Michael Lawrence,
Kevin O’Brien, Alicia Oshlack, Carolin Strobl


Oct 20, 2016

The R Community - 2007

The R Community - 2007

The R Community - 2015


© Torben Tvedebrink 2015

The R Community - 2015

useR! 2015 reception 4
© Torben Tvedebrink 2015

The R Community - 2015

useR! 2015 reception 3
© Torben Tvedebrink 2015

The R Community - 2016

The R Community - 2016

The R Community - 2016

Where we are now?

  • How well are women actually represented in the R community? And in what capacity?
    • Conferences
    • Packages
    • Google Summer of Code
    • R Foundation, R Core
    • Publications
    • R-Ladies

2010 Survey of Packages

  • 2010 survey of 1087 maintainers of packages on CRAN/Bioconductor plus contributors on R-forge¹
  • 9% of package authors were women (95% CI: 7.1 - 11.0%)
  • 32.5% were from the USA

¹Mair, P., Hofmann, E., Gruber, K., Hatzinger, R., Zeleis, A. and Hornik, K. (2015) Motivation, values, and work design as drivers of participation in the R open source project for statistical computing, Proc Nat. Acad. Sci.

Conferences

  • useR! has already been working to improve diversity
    • gradual increase in number of female keynotes
    • code of conduct introduced in 2015
    • diversity scholarships & mothers’ room in 2016

useR! 2015

useR! 2015 breakdown by presentation and gender

R Packages

  • All CRAN maintainers (Mar 2016) processed with genderizer
    • uses databases to predict gender from first name
  • Supplemented by manual assignment
  • 14.8% package authors “female”, 11.4% with P(gender) ≥ 0.8

Other R Project Contributions

  • 18% Google Summer of Code 2015 mentors were women (9 individuals)
  • In remaining cases, percentages represent one or two women

Publications: JCGS

Where should we be?

US Students

  • US National Center for Education Statistics (2013-14)
  • Computer science ranges from 18% (Bachelor’s) to 29% (Master’s) female
  • Others range from 29% to 58% female

US Occupations

  • Data from American Community Survey 2014
  • 22% female programmers
  • Other scientific/analytic occupations at least 41% female

Goals for R Community

  • Developers (CRAN maintainers, GSoC students, ISC funding holders) should at least be comparable to computer science figures
    • > 20% women
  • Broader user community (R conference attendees/speakers, RUG members) should at least be comparable to mathematical/natural sciences
    • 30-40% women

How can we get there?


  • Keep data
  • Build developer capacity
  • Community support


Data Monitoring


Details Done To Do
useR! attendees, invited speakers, presenters (talk/lightning/poster), chairs, committee members (local/program) 2015 2004-2014
packages CRAN maintainers/authors, others? maintainers authors
GSoC students, mentors 2015 2008-2014
ISC projects proposers funded rejected?
R Journal editors, authors editors authors

Surveys

  • Get input from the community on obstacles and ideas for improvements
  • Target survey at particular populations, e.g. useR! attendees, local user group attendees, package maintainers, R-help users, StackOverflow users
  • Create bank of questions and customise survey for target group
  • First survey conducted as part useR! 2016 participants (June 27-30)
  • Analysis in the works


Information Central: Website/GitHub

  • http://forwards.github.io/
    • Summary of where we are
    • Events calendar
    • Data and code for gender summaries
    • Links to resources on diversity in tech
    • Slides from talks
    • More as initiative develops!

Conferences

  • The taskforce made recommendations for useR! 2016

    Recomendation Action
    50:50 program committee 7:6 female:male
    50:50 session chairs 7:18
    ≥ 20% women on panels NA
    put gender stats on website not done
  • Future useR!s
    • maintain current gender balance for invited speakers
    • aim for similar gender balance for tutorials: 28% had female tutor in 2015
  • useR! 2017 proposal includes offering childcare

Community building: RLadies

RLadies - London

  • Example events
    • drop-in session for beginners
    • tutorials
    • “Tour de R”
    • SF uncubed: recruiting tech event


credit: Chiin-Rui Tan

RLadies - Melbourne Oct 18

RLadies - Melbourne Oct 18

RLadies - Melbourne Oct 18

rOpenSci

  • R packages to access scientific data; visualize; document & share data
  • Community support: open review process, support with maintenance, package promotion
  • Unconference (43% non-male)

credit: Gabriela de Queiroz

Australian rOpenSci 2016

Australian rOpenSci 2016

Community building: Twitter

Recruiting Ambassadors

  • WiR emailed prominent women in R community
  • Some already active, other prompted to act as ambassadors

I am actually working with the conference committee on funding a female grad student or post doc to go to the conference … I will definitely get the word out
– Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, email

I’m making myself available to help on giving feedback, helping on ideas, reviews of abstracts, etc. I would love to see more R-ladies presenting at useR!
– Gabriela de Queiroz, message on meetup

R User Groups

  • 237 local RUGs
  • Heading for 20 RUG meetings per week, somewhere in the world
  • Short talks, “show and tell”

RUGs as a Springboard

  • Opportunity for women
    • practice public speaking (conference format)
    • get feedback on projects
    • relatively low-cost (short talk, local venue)
  • Organisers can help
    • small numbers of speakers: not so hard to balance program
    • try lightning talks, e.g. recent DublinR 2 male, 3 female
    • low risk inviting new people

Female-friendly R Workshops

  • Not restricted to R-ladies groups!
    • female only/ males +1s
    • majority female mentors
  • Potential Women in R workshops?
    • beginner workshops in partnership with RUGS
    • summer school for aspiring package developers (Europe 2018)


Google Summer of Code

  1. Mentors/students propose 3 month projects
  2. Google awards a fixed number of student slots
  3. Admins & mentors select projects
    • student earns $5500
    • mentors benefit from contribution to their project

R’s contribution from ideas to implementation managed via GitHub github.com/rstats-gsoc

Google Summer of Code

summerofcode.withgoogle.com

On Ramps for Contributing

  • Several R packages on GitHub have a CONTRIBUTING.md
    • often not designed for novices
  • Target issues at novices
    • use tags
    • step-by-step instructions
credit: Charlotte Spencer

Mentoring

  • Open issue on GitHub and Tweet request for review
  • Study group/RUG code swaps
  • Consultancy
  • Scaling rOpenSci???

R Consortium ISC

  • The R Consortium is a framework for the support of R by industry
  • Its Infrastructure Steering Committee offers funding for projects
    • software development
    • developing teaching materials
    • documenting best practices
    • standardising APIs
    • research


Funded ISC Projects

  • R-Hub: pre-test CRAN packages on multiple platforms, automate package building
  • A unified framework for distributed computing in R
  • Improving database interface (DBI)
  • R Implementation, Optimization and Tooling Workshops (RIOT)
  • R Localization (RL10N): enable packages to include translations
  • SatRdays: regional conferences
  • Simple Features access for R: utilities for geospatial data
  • Software Carpentry R instructor training

Take-homes

For Women Starting Out

  • Find support: R-ladies/RUG/Study group
  • Start small
    • Contribute to existing package
    • Make a package of personal utility functions
  • Put on your flame-proof suit and ask stupid questions

    If nm is double, very likely INTEGER(nm)[0] is negative and your C code does nothing at all. Hence it could be fast but useless.
    – Reply to Heather on R-help, 2005

  • Publish code to get feedback and credit

For Established Women

  • Stay visible
    • Speak at conferences
    • Don’t hang out in clique at meetings
    • Be active online: Twitter, Blog, StackOverflow, GitHub, …
  • Mentor other women
    • R-ladies/Female-friendly workshop
    • Encourage contributions on own projects, GSoC
    • Suggest names for conferences, and insist on balance
  • Consider applying for ISC funding

For Everyone

  • Be aware of (other) women’s contributions
    • Attend talks - even if you can only drop in
    • Invite women to low-key events (RUG, departmental seminar)
  • Encourage women’s participation
    • Nominate for speakers, committee members, awards, …
    • Invite onto your project
  • Promote welcoming culture
    • Use gender neutral language
    • Give constructive feedback

R Foundation Women in R Taskforce

to improve the participation and experience of women in the R community

Jenny Bryan
CA
Alicia Oshlack
AU
Oliver Keyes
US
Di Cook
AU
Carolin Strobl
CH
Kevin O’Brien
IE
Julie Josse
FR
Heather Turner
UK
Michael Lawrence
US

Summary

  • Women are under-represented in both user and developer communities
    • Users ~ 20% women; goal 30-40% women
    • Developers ~ 10% women; goal 20% women
  • Women in R Taskforce has been established to address this
    • Current focus: data gathering, communications
    • Future work: outreach


@RWomenTaskforce

http://forwards.github.io/